(Another piece from blogger thereisnospoon, who lives in the district and is serving as our Ventura County correspondent. – promoted by Dante Atkins (hekebolos))

The Strickland campaign is really outdoing itself at this point, and reinforcing Hannah-Beth Jackson’s arguments against him all at the same time.  No sooner does Hannah-Beth’s latest mailer (a copy of which I got in my mailbox yesterday) come out attacking Strickland for his big money contributors in the oil, tobacco, pharmaceutical and other industries, than Tony tries to pull off yet another fraud on voters with the hidden help of those same industries in whose pocket he resides.

Apparently, voters all across the 19th District started receiving mysterious robocalls from a group called “Californians for Jobs & Education“.  The calls, of which there are as yet no transcripts available, are in support of Tony Strickland.  Below is what a quick google search of this outfit brings up, via Election Track:

$50,000 from Farmers Employees & Agents Pac (Mill Valley, CA) on 04/22/2008

$10,000 from Personal Insurance Federation Of California Pac (Sacramento, CA) on 04/16/2008

$50,000 from Chevron Corporation (Sacramento, CA) on 09/07/2007

$25,000 from Fair Public Policy Coalition (Sacramento, CA)  on 09/10/2007

Another $25,000 from Chevron Corporation (Sacramento, CA) on 12/13/2007

$12,500 from California Hospital Association Pac (Sacramento, CA) on 08/29/2007

$5,961 from California Senior Advocates League Pac (Los Angeles, CA) on 03/06/2007

Wait a minute…the California Senior Advocates League Pac?  Who the heck?  Let’s take a little trip to the Secretary of State’s page for these folks.  What do we see?  Why, the very first listing is:

$25,000 from “EL DORADO ENTERPRISES DBA HUSTLER CASINO”

Nice.  I’m not sure what these seniors are advocating for, or who is doing the advocating for them, but I strongly suspect Bob Dole and his little blue pills may be involved.  Other savory contributions for these wonderful people include $50,000 from Farmer’s Insurance, $25,000 from 21st Century Insurance, $10,000 from “Los Angeles Casinos Pac” (score again!), and a whopping quarter million from a couple of real estate PACs.  Real nice…

Great group of friends Tony has there in the “Californians for Jobs & Education”.  Because nobody’s more interested in jobs and education big insurance companies, hospital owners, and Chevron.  A quick check of the Secretary of State’s page on the group also shows another nifty $5,000 contribution from “INSURANCE BROKERS AND AGENTS ISSUES PAC, SPONSORED BY IBA WEST, INC.”  These, of course, are just more Californians interested in jobs and education, fighting to give everyone’s favorite environmentalist Tony Strickland a chance to fight for the people!

But that’s not all.  Whom did these upstanding Californians for Jobs and Education hire to conduct the robocall campaign?  A firm based in San Diego called TaxpayersAdvocate, whose website apparently hasn’t been updated in almost a year and a half.  TaxpayerAdvocate is a one-man show headed by longtime GOP San Diego activist Scott Barnett, whose own bio mentions that:

From December 2001 to June 2003 Mr. Barnett served as President/CEO of the Lincoln Club, a GOP donor group.

You might think Tony Strickland might have tried fighting for the district by, say, at least using a contractor who’s not a real estate obsessed GOP operative from San Diego.

But then, taking money from insurance companies, Hustler casinos and Chevron to pay a San Diego operative to make fraudulent calls is just the name of the game for Tony Strickland and his crew.

Fortunately, the voters of SD19 can do better.  

(A backgrounder… – promoted by David Dayen)

As David Dayen noted on the frontpage, Hannah-Beth Jackson has a new ad on the air discussing her role in protecting schoolchildren from toxic pesticides; I live in downtown Ventura and have seen the aid on my TV several times already.  It’s an excellent piece of political communication, showing her bipartisan credentials in a race where both candidates are desperately vying for the middle ground, and illustrating the contrast between her concern for everyday families and Tony Strickland’s evident lack thereof.

But the ad, good as it is, doesn’t tell the whole story.  For a little background, let’s go way back in the time machine to the year 2000, when a group of children were blithely making their way onto school grounds for a day of classes at Mound Elementary School in Ventura, naively under the assumption that they could trust the air they breathe.  Because surely there must have been a law preventing toxic chemicals from being spewed into the air right next to a school, right?  Boy, were they wrong:

Ventura, CA  – As children were arriving to Mound Elementary School early this morning, a commonly used insecticide was applied to adjacent fields.  The chemical, Lorsban, drifted over the children and towards the school as they arrived for their classes.  Chlorpyrifos, the chemical name for Lorsban, is known to affect the nervous system by inhibiting an enzyme that is important to the transmission of nerve impulses.  The immediate affects of exposure include dizziness, headaches, nausea and other symptoms commonly associated with the common flu.

At this time, two children from Mound are confirmed as being sent home with symptoms of exposure to this pesticide.  In addition, some members of the staff have complained of headaches throughout the day, while five students from Balboa Elementary (a neighboring school) were confirmed as being sent home with symptoms of exposure.

“It is alarming to think, and now witness firsthand, that toxic chemicals can be applied next to a school when children are present.” said Richard Kirby, principal of Mound Elementary.  “This incident highlights the need for extraordinary precaution when using dangerous pesticides around schools.”

Members of Community and Children’s Advocates Against Pesticide Poisoning (CCAAPP) were alerted to this morning’s incident when a school official at Mound noticed the application taking place and saw the chemical wafting into the air.  School officials immediately contacted CCAAPP, who in turn called the County Agricultural Commissioner.

“CCAAPP has been working in the community to prevent this type of incident from taking place,” said Lynda Uvari, member of CCAAPP and parent of a Mound student.  “Unfortunately, these incidents continue to occur with no end in sight.”

No end in sight.  One parent of a Mound Elementary student recalls the incident in a passionate anti-Strickland piece from two days ago:

IT WAS A TYPICAL frantic morning at my house. My daughter, always a sleepyhead, was running late once again. We grabbed her backpack and dashed out the door to our car for the ride to Mound Elementary School in Ventura where she was a fifth grader.

Pulling up to the school we found our car enveloped by a thick fog which I had assumed was weather related. My daughter got out in the middle of it and waved goodbye. I drove home, pulled in the garage and noticed something very odd about my vehicle: it was completely covered in a sticky film.

Hours later I had a sick child holding a note from her principal.

What I had mistaken for fog was actually a cloud of Lorsban, a powerful pesticide which had been banned by the EPA for use in homes because of its neurological effects on children. The citrus operation next to the school had used a speed sprayer during school hours and sent a cloud over the campus. Dozens of children and adults were sickened that day. Testing showed it was all over playground equipment, outdoor eating areas and inside classrooms.

To our horror we discovered there was little we could do to prevent it from happening again to our children or anyone else’s. We needed help.

The farmer spraying the noxious chemical had not technically run afoul of the law, since the neurotoxin was not at that time on the “restricted” list of pesticides.  Thus, even lawsuits against the farmer in question (which were eventually successful) would have done and did do nothing to prevent further instances of toxic pesticides being sprayed next to schools during the time at which students would be in or near the school.

Something had to be done.  Fortunately, the parents of Mound Elementary students had an advocate in then-Assemblywoman Hannah-Beth Jackson, who immediately got to work on no-nonsense legislation correcting this unacceptable situation.

But it wasn’t that easy.  Despite having a Democratic governor and a Democratic legislature, the bill took a full two years to be considered and voted on.  At times, the bill seemed to be on life support, and was rescued from near death only by Hannah-Beth’s ability to marshal a broad coalition of support that wouldn’t let it go under:

“It was a team effort,” Jackson said of the two-year push to get her bill signed into law. “We all came together to do what was best for our children.”

Jackson announced the governor’s signature during a news conference at Mound Elementary School in east Ventura, where a pesticide drift occurred in the fall of 2000.

The incident prompted Jackson’s legislative effort, an endeavor she said appeared to be on life support at times, but was ultimately held together by a broad coalition of farming and environmental interests.

It took a heroic effort on Hannah-Beth’s part to make this no-brainer legislation a reality.  Tony Strickland, meanwhile, voted against the bill.  Yes, against the bill preventing toxic chemicals from being sprayed next to school grounds.  Sure, we all know that Strickland is a fraud, describing himself as a strong environmentalist while receiving a zero percent lifetime rating from the California League of Conservation Voters and voting 119 times out of 121 against environmental regulations during his six years in the Assembly.  We all know that Strickland is running a greenwashing campaign, posing as Vice-President of front company “Greenwave Solutions”, a company that apparently has no website despite being Strickland’s claim to environmentalist fame and justification for his preposterous ballot designation “Alternative Energy Executive“–despite not having put up even the basic front money his conservative friends did to create the facade:

Stricklands’s ballot designation is “Alternative Energy Executive”. Here’s what the Ventura County Star had to say about that: Strickland, “who has spent his entire adult life either working in the legislature or running for political office, has decided to present himself to voters this year wearing the mantle of a newfound vocation: ‘Alternative Energy Executive.'” To do so, he formed a new wave energy company with four political friends, but didn’t even put up the $5,000 the others had pledged to start the company”….

This putative Alternative Energy Executive voted against every alternative energy bill that came his way. He even voted against requirements for renewable energy generation (SB 1078-Byron Sher) that would have benefitted his own company.

But protecting schoolchildren from toxic chemicals isn’t an environmental issue.  It’s a human issue.  It’s an issue of basic decency.  Hannah-Beth Jackson used her credibility as not just an environmental advocate, but a decent human being to bring together farming and environmental interests to get this legislation passed, in spite of the almost unfathomable reticence of the Sacramento establishment.

Tony Strickland has no decency.  He voted against the bill apparently for no other reason than to oppose any and all laws that might constrain the “freedom” of certain farmers to poison children.  This “Renewable Energy Executive” voted not just against an environmental law: he voted against a basic law-and-order regulation designed to prevent the poisoning of children at school.

But what else should we expect from the Grand Old Party of Child Molesters?  

The most hotly anticipated State Senate election this year is in the 19th District covering Santa Barbara and Ventura County, between Democrat Hannah-Beth Jackson and Republican Tony Strickland.  Though the two are almost polar opposites, the chunk of the district in Santa Barbara, where residents have long memories about the 1969 oil spill, makes it impossible for Republicans to win with their “Drill Now” message on energy.  So Tony Strickland opted to run some ads that Al Gore might have run were he to be contesting in the district, highlighting renewable energy through wind, solar, algae, tidal and other forms.  This is completely at odds with Strickland’s doctrinaire Republican record, with votes against green building standards, minimum renewable energy standards, and even fuel-efficient tires.  Strickland has taken money from Big Oil and stood with global warming denialists in the recent past.  It’s incongruous for him to carry a pro-environment message.

So I hooked up with the Courage Campaign and the California League of Conservation Voters to put together a little video highlighting this incongruity.

What’s interesting is that the Courage Campaign’s Web tool invited those supporters who received their email blast to spread the word, and they were so successful, both online political reporters at the Ventura County Star, the region’s biggest newspaper, covered the video.  More important, the Jackson campaign has been energized to fight back against some of Strickland allies’ misleading ads on taxes, and in doing so buttresses the outside groups’ take about Strickland’s terrible environmental record.

So progressive groups are ensuring that Strickland gets away with nothing in this race, and in turn the Jackson campaign is fighting back as well and counter-punching swiftly and effectively.  This is a growing success story in the 19th.

As founder of the CALIFORNIA LIST I know all too well the importance of political positioning during an electoral cycle, especially when it comes to issues that matter to voters within your district.  And if a particular issue is a hot button to the majority of your voters, your record had better be aligned with that voting bloc if you hope to win. This is what separates the committed legislator from the calculated chameleons. Senate District 19 is community of long-standing environmental activists and GOP candidate Tony Strickland has apparently donned his coat of many colors in his senate bid against Hannah-Beth Jackson.

Lately Strickland has been wearing a green coat of paint listing himself on the ballot as “Alternative Energy Executive,” a title he dubiously earned a year ago when he co-founded GreenWave Energy Solutions.  That does sound nice!  After all, SD19 loves green and GreenWave Energy Solutions certainly conjures thoughts of eco-friendly energy solutions. So what is GreenWave and what has Strickland done in his tenure as co-founder, and more importantly, what has Strickland done for the environment before his eco-heroic rebirth?

Strickland is one of five partners of GreenWave who have each pledged to give $5000 of their own dollars to start the company – although he hasn’t paid his share yet. The company’s stated goal is to convert the force of the ocean waves off the California coastline into energy and they have applications in with the FEC to develop two projects to do so. However, all his website has about energy is the section titled “Reducing Our Dependence on Foreign Oil,” which reads:

“As Vice President of GreenWave Energy Solutions, a company created to harness the power of ocean waves, Tony Strickland is helping to invest in new, innovative, clean and renewable energy sources to help reduce our dependence on foreign oil and help jumpstart California’s economy.”

Unfortunately for Strickland, a thin coat of green paint won’t cover up the fact that he has a zero rating from the League of Conservation Voters and the Sierra Club. It won’t cover up the fact that he opposed a bill that requires utilities to use a higher percentage of alternative energy sources, choosing typical Republican “no-mandates” orthodoxy over the environment.  I’m sure it the voters in SD-19 are intelligent enough to discern who the real eco-friendly candidate is – Democrat Hannah-Beth Jackson and she has the record to prove it.

Jackson is committed to developing California’s green economy, protecting our air and water, preserving open space and our eco-diversity, and improving public health by working for a cleaner environment. Her record in the Assembly and as an activist on environmental issues is unparalleled. While serving in the California Assembly, Jackson chaired the two committees in the Assembly considered most critical to environmental policy:

         o 1999-2001. The Environmental Safety and Toxic Materials Committee

         o 2002-2004. The Committee on Natural Resources

Jackson has also authored over 30 pieces of legislation designed to promote alternative energy sources, protect air and water quality, fight offshore oil drilling, reduce coastal pollution, preserve open space, protect against pesticides and toxics in our daily lives, and protect the Coastal Commission and the California coast against overdevelopment and pollution.

Jackson has received an early endorsement from the League of Conservation Voters for this election, and has received the endorsement of the Sierra Club in every election in which she’s been a candidate.  The choice is clear if you are looking for a committed environmental legislator — Tony Strickland just can’t measure up to Hannah-Beth Jackson.  To learn more about Jackson’s candidacy and other CALIFORNIA LIST supported candidates visit our website.

(The second in an occasional series of articles highlighting California legislative districts and candidates that could provide Democrats with a vital 2/3 majority.)

On the drive out from Santa Monica to Simi Valley, there’s a moment when you know that you’ve left Los Angeles County and ventured into Ventura.  Suddenly, the greenery recedes away, the canyon walls rise, and the scene becomes positively dramatic.  If you let your mind wander, you could picture yourself in the middle of a John Ford movie backdrop or a national monument somewhere in Utah, despite being just 35 miles from downtown LA.

I was headed out to a fundraiser, driving along the 118 Freeway, which area transportation poohbahs see fit to remind you is named the “Ronald Reagan Freeway” about every 8/10th of a mile.  Astonishingly enough, this was a Democratic fundraiser.  For a candidate seeking a seat held by Tom McClintock, arguably the most rock-ribbed conservative in the entire state.  And it’s a seat Democrats can win.  Things are changing along the Ronald Reagan Freeway.

If you want to look at it statistically, there’s no better resource than ortcutt’s fantastic rundown.  The raw numbers are pretty clear.  Over the last 5 years, Senate District 19, serving Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties, along with a sliver of LA County at Santa Clarita, has gone from a 7-point Republican registration advantage to just over a 4-point one, one of the larger moves in the whole state.  The state’s districts were designed not to have any variability, and yet that’s what’s happening.  And this is not just about registration.  Feinstein and Boxer both carried this district, and in 2004 Bush carried it by a mere two points.  And that was before his disastrous second term.  For this and other reasons, the demographics are changing here.

SD-19 (here’s a map) covers major areas like Santa Clarita in LA County, Thousand Oaks, Simi Valley, Camarillo (hello outlet malls) and San Buenavento in Ventura, and large sections of Santa Barbara County like the city of Santa Barbara.  Far more of the district is located in Ventura County, however, and the area has seen a migration of sorts, as residents priced out of the wealthier Santa Barbara housing market have moved in.  And Ventura County Democrats have been relentless.  I have seen their work up close; my region as an AD delegate stretches up through this district, and I have seen presentations of the innovative efforts that were instrumental in closing the registration gap.  These shifts did not happen by accident.  Sure, the different socioeconomic shifts played a part, as well as the failed leadership of the President and an incumbent State Senator who values budget numbers in a ledger far more than constituent services.  But more than that, they were the work of aggressive new tactics.  One of these programs is Vote Blue Committee Central Coast, designed to register and bring to the polls 13,900 new Democrats in 2008.  The group is targeting new residents, building a reliable, locally-based voter file, and encouraging vote-by-mail.  This is the kind of new tactics we need to see replicated throughout California to realize the goals of a true 58-county strategy.

This is why I’m excited about SD-19, regardless of who ultimately runs in the general election.  On the Republican side, Tom McClintock is a termed-out incumbent who is already raising money for yet another statewide run, this time for the Board of Equalization.  I’d be absolutely shocked if this committed conservative would go back on core ideology and decide to run a third term, should the ballot initiative pass and allow him to do so.  Anyway, there’s already a candidate, last year’s State Controller nominee Tony Strickland.  He has the signed endorsement of every member of the Republican Caucus.  He’s looking to join his wife, an Assemblywoman, back in Sacramento.  But he’s really just looking for something to do until Elton Gallegly retires from the Congress.  There’s no burning desire to serve the public here, just a resume-builder until Strickland graduates to the seat he thinks he’s entitled to. 

Which is why I think it’s healthy to have two excellent candidates in a primary, raising the profile of Democratic values, fighting for the right to take down Strickland next November.  We all know about Hannah-Beth Jackson from her incredible work at Speak Out California and her tireless advocacy of progressive ideals.  Let me tell you a little bit about Jim Dantona, who’s been in the race about four months and who you may not know as much about.  First of all, Ventura County Democratic activists in the area pushed very hard for him to run.  I usually give latitude to the locals on the ground for determining who is their best candidate to serve their district.  In this case, Dantona has a resume that is undeniably impressive.  After a brief baseball career with the Chicago Cubs in 1969, he taught elementary school before spending 10 years as chief of staff to longtime Senate President Pro Tem David Roberti.  Later, he founded an organization called “Baseballers Against Drugs” to teach kids the importance of staying clean and addiction-free.  And he’s a single parent of three grown children.

I attended a fundraiser for Dantona last Thursday, featuring longtime friend and former Maryland Lt. Governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend.  The blogger Mark Gage at Conejo Valley Democrat, who I met at the event, has an excellent writeup.  Dantona likes to style himself a “centrist,” and I have no illusions that he’ll be with the most progressive elements of the party on every issue.  But I will say this.  The three main points in his stump speech were jobs, health care for every Californian, and scrapping No Child Left Behind.  As centrism goes, I’d say he’s more Tip O’Neill than Joe Lieberman.  And he didn’t have a bad word to say about Hannah-Beth Jackson, which to me is crucial.

I’m agnostic about the primary, other than thinking it’s very good for the Democratic Party in this area to have two proud Democrats discussing important issues that people in this district haven’t heard about for 8 years.  The locals clearly see this as a terrific opportunity to change the seat and get halfway to that elusive 2/3 majority in the Senate.  And it would obviously set Republicans spinning in their McMansions to see a Democrat representing the towns along the Ronald Reagan Freeway.